Monthly Archives: June 2015

In mid-April 2015, the Wondama Bay Regency government and the Environment Management Board gathered community representatives from the Mairasi, Miere and Wamesa tribes, who live in villages around Naikere, Kuriwamesa and Rasiei (all in Wondama Bay Regency) for a meeting in the Rasiei District Office meeting room. From the meeting’s outset, the community didn’t particularly […]

Officials in Jakarta can’t seem to stop making pronouncements promising vast new agricultural expansion along the eastern frontier of the Indonesian state. In May President Joko Widodo announced 1.2 million hectares of rice fields to be developed in three years in the Merauke area of West Papua. Now his agricultural minister, Amran Sulaiman, has apparently […]

Amandus Yoliw Kaize, A Malind tribal chief from the Ezam group in Kaisa Village, Malind District, Merauke, wrote to President Joko Widodo on 18th April 2015 and sent Pusaka a copy in early June. The letter concerned a report of a land grab. In the letter, Amandus reported his problems with an oil palm plantation […]

The article below from Majalah Selangkah describes a a protest in Deiyai Regency against a company called PT Papua Power Indonesia1, but doesn’t mention what the company is actually doing in the region. In fact it is the contractor which is looking to build the Yawei-Urumuka hydro-power plant which will generate at least 300MW of […]

Malaysian company Felda Global Ventures has finalised a deal to buy 37% of PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk, the plantation company in which the Rajawali Group held the controlling stake. The company was created last year after Rajawali’s reverse takeover of BW Plantations. It’s a huge deal. Felda Global Ventures claims to be the world’s […]

The Kamoro indigenous people living near Poumako port, Timika have had to live with the effects of toxic tailings from the Freeport mine for decades. Now that a plan has emerged to build a smelter to process the copper and gold the mine produces, they have stated that enough is enough, and have held a […]

PT Freeport Indonesia is planning to build a smelter in Mimika, in Papua, but this plan has met with opposition from the Kamoro indigenous people because their ancestral land will become even more polluted by the company’s waste. Their environment has already been destroyed by mine tailings from Freeport’s ongoing operation. And the plans are […]

In early 2014 the Forestry ministry gave permission to release 8937.39 hectares of land from the state forest estate to PT Berkat Setiakawan Abadi (BSA) for a rubber plantaion near Werabur, Weianggi and Kurei villages in Nikiwar District, Wondama Bay Regency, West Papua Province. In 2008, local people had already rejected PT BSA, which is […]